The most notorious place in Albania

Kosovo Tribunal

What is Special Court for Kosovo

The special court’s jurisdiction will cover offences committed between January 1, 1998 and December 31, 2000.The draft law says that chambers will be based in Kosovo as well as in a host country, while the prosecution will in a host country “but it could have an office in Kosovo”. It has been widely rumored that the Netherlands will be the host country. Read

Why It is Needed

It is needed for five reasons. (1) During the nine years of its mandate UNMIK did not deal with the crimes discussed in the Marty report, despite having – or being able to find – all the information that Marty has uncovered. (2) EULEX too was unable, or unwilling, to touch those matters. (3) Despite 15 years of efforts, and the expenditure of much donors’ money, Kosovo’s judiciary still lacks the capacity, integrity and independence to deal with those cases (or indeed with any case of more than negligible political or economic importance): the judiciary is so subservient to Kosovo’s élite that, according to a 2012 report by the European Court of Auditors, judges ‘tend to act in anticipatory obedience to external influences’. (4) The ICTY itself has failed when it dealt with the KLA side of the 1998–99 conflict, because although it ascertained that some crimes had been committed it could not ascribe them to any identifiable person (with negligible exceptions): and this failure is due – by the ICTY’s own admission (see, e.g., pages 9–20 of this judgement) – to the fact that the court did not succeed in protecting the integrity of the evidence (witnesses, mainly, many of whom refused to speak, said incoherent things, or changed their versions; and some potential witnesses died unnatural deaths before they could speak). (5) The ICTY, anyway, is not just on the way out but might also have been discredited by a recent string of prominent acquittals, which seemed politically motivated (the politics there might have had to do also with humanitarian standards in conflicts involving the US and Israeli armies, however). Read

Special Investigative Task Force

The mandate of the EU Special Investigative Task Force (SITF) is to conduct an independent criminal investigation into the war crime and organised crime allegations contained in the Council of Europe (CoE) report of January 2011 by Senator Dick Marty, as well as other possible crimes connected to those allegations. Read

Who Could Stand Trial For War Crimes on Kosovo

Former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) members might be accused of war crimes by a special court, including Deputy Premier of Kosovo and Foreign Minister Hashim Thaci, Speaker of Parliament Kadri Veseli, Vice Speaker of the Parliament Dzavit Haliti, former Prime Minister Agim Ceku and others… Read